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garden fence, its miniscule nostrils flaring as it took a better look, as if it could see them all inside.
    “Jesus. They don’t get that big,” James murmured authoritatively from the back. “They just don’t.”
    Miller slowly and carefully backed the Bravo up, eyeing the houses to either side of the street. Not many cars around. He hoped the neighbourhood had all evacuated for somewhere else, with things that big prowling around. He headed down one sidestreet, and another, then he had to dog-leg the route around a known commune occupying the edge of Forest Park, and by the time they got anywhere near a straight route to the new compound, the dust storm hit.
    It was like the hand of God passed over them, from the west to the east, left to right. The dust had seemed red, but the reddish haze of light lasted only a few moments before the full fury of the storm rolled over them, eating the sun with a howl of wind. Visibility dropped to thirty feet, then five, the headlights doing nothing more than creating murky blobs of tan and grey light in the murk. Thankfully the Bravo was fitted with smoke-piercing laser scanners. Even if Miller couldn’t see, the car could, and he set it back to automatic drive.
    “Everything’s going to be fine,” he said, leaning around the driver’s seat. “We’ll just be a little late getting you to the Astoria Compound.”
    Helen was holding her nose. “What’s that smell?”
    “I’m sure it’s just the dust, baby,” Mrs. Williams said. “Could you turn on the air conditioning or something, Alex?”
    The Bravo had something better than air conditioning—NBC grade HEPA/active carbon air filters. Miller toggled them on, just before he started to catch the scent too—something rotten, decaying. Mushrooms and, very faintly, the burning sting of ammonia. The filters cleared it quickly, thank God.
    They didn’t have the roads to themselves, even if the city seemed deserted in the murk. Just two intersections after their route straightened out, they encountered a knot of stalled traffic. Most of the cars were abandoned. A long queue led to the intersection—a chain of automatically driven vehicles had halted behind one empty car—but ahead of them were vehicles physically blocking both sides of the road. A few of the stopped cars’ interiors were lit, passengers nervously looking ahead...
    Miller craned his head and squinted through the fog, but couldn’t see anything other than a blur of light.
    “Trix?”
    “ Oui ?” Du Trieux rested her thumb against the Gilboa’s safety.
    “Be ready to bail out after me.” Miller smiled back at the kids. “This’ll take just a moment.” With that, he got out of the Bravo, slamming the door shut before too much of the roiling dust got in.
    The smell hit him like a hammer. Rotting asparagus trapped at the bottom of a garbage bag with something acid and vile done to it, every fleck of dust in his mouth making him want to retch. His eyes watered uncontrollably, and each new breath felt like a bad idea. But Miller had survived the tear gas hut during basic training. During his four-year stretch, waiting for a war that never came, he and his squadmates had bet money on who’d make it longest in the hut without a mask on. It was the kind of dumb thing young men do, but Miller was glad for it now, struggling around to the Bravo’s trunk and hammering on it until Morland or du Trieux popped it open from the control console.
    Almost blind, Miller opened one of the panic-packs lined up next to the emergency medical kit, pulled out the gas-mask and mashed it against his face with one hand, taking clean breaths through the filters and coughing out whatever the shit in his lungs was while triggering the exhalation valves. After a few moments of spluttering and wheezing he was breathing clean again, and he took the time to finish securing the mask before grabbing one of the shotguns. The wind tugging unpredictably at his limbs, he made his way